Andhra to share Mee Seva e-governance service with others states

Andhra Pradesh has agreed to share its e-governance initiative Mee Seva with other states.

Under Mee Seva (meaning at your service) launched a year ago, the state government is offering 45 various services and plans to increase the same to 100 services in two to three months.

Services like issuance of birth, caste and income certificates are being performed for citizens in 15 to 20 minutes, which earlier used to take 10 to 15 days.

Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy Thursday agreed to a suggestion made by J. Satyanarayana, secretary, department of electronics and information technology, government of India at the eIndia event here.

Satyanarayana suggested to the chief minister to dedicate Mee Seva to the nation so that other state can take benefit of this ready-made platform with minor customizations and use of cloud technology.

He pointed out that under various e-governance projects across the country citizen services were being offered to 8.2 crore people. "We plan to increase this number to 15 crore by March 2013 and 30 crore by March 2014," he said.

The chief minister claimed that the Mee Seva initiative has immensely benefited the common man. According to one estimate, this has saved annually Rs.4,000 crore to Rs.6,000 crore which the citizens used to pay as bribe to government officers at various levels for the services.

Reddy said he now planned to use the information and communication technology in health services aimed at pregnant women. He explained how the use of this technology in student scholarships helped the government save Rs.300 crore every year, which was being misappropriated.

He said as the state was giving Rs.26,000 crore subsidies to various sections of people every year, the use of ICT would ensure that the subsidies reach the targeted group.

The state is now planning to link all the welfare schemes to Aadhar to check the leakages. It has already covered six crore out of 8.3 crore people under Aadhar.